FAST & FURIOUS – Brian Tyler

The fourth film in the high octane ‘Fast and the Furious’ series, and the second one scored by Brian Tyler, Fast & Furious re-unites Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, the four stars of the original 2001 hit. In this new film Brian O’Conner (Walker) is again working undercover for the FBI, and approaches street racer Dominic Toretto (Diesel) for help in bringing down a vicious heroin importer. Having scored the third F&F film, Tokyo Drift, for his friend and regular collaborator Justin Lin, Brian Tyler returns to lend his musical voice to the fourth film too.

Part of Tyler’s score are scored like a modern day Western, with electric and acoustic guitars pitting themselves against driving electronic rhythms, techno beats and roaring percussion in cues such as the opening “Landtrain”. A lot of Tyler’s action sequences are scored in this way; cues such as “The Border”, “The Tunnel”, “Revenge”, “Accelerator”, “In the Name of the Father” and “The Showdown” combine a relentless forward motion with a raw mechanical undercurrent, often giving way to the rousing, hammering orchestral mayhem one has been accustomed to hearing in other recent scores such as Eagle Eye.

Other cues inhabit the world of urban cool, with more techno rhythms and electronic beats giving the world of fast cars and sexy girls an unmistakable air of bad boy appeal. Tracks such as “Fast and Furious”, “Dom vs. Brian”, “Hanging With Dom” and the excellent “Outta Sight”, while not inhabiting the genre of music I often explore, are the epitome of ghetto chic. Thankfully, Tyler also tones down his music once in a while, giving “Letty” a lovely romantic guitar theme, endowing “Suite” with a beautiful, sweeping but downbeat string melody, and giving his listeners a chance to catch their breath, if only for 120 seconds or so.

Clocking in 1t 78 minutes, the album for Fast & Furious may prove too much for some listeners; truthfully, the score *does* become a little overbearing by the end, and had some of the repetitious fat been trimmed you could have come away with a hugely enjoyable 40-45 minute album. As it stands, despite the quality of the writing and Tyler’s boundless enthusiasm, this is a score which won’t get much replay value, purely because it’s so exhausting.